Commentary: on the Epic of Gilgamesh

 

Part of the attraction of the Epic of Gilgamesh, at least for me, is that this is mankind's oldest literary work; the tablets containing the story of Gilgamesh were written approximately 4,000 years ago. Despite this, the text has a contemporary quality not necessarily found in other ancient texts. It is the story of a man's journey to self-knowledge and inner peace; of course, this "heroes' journey" is not exceptional in describing the journey, it is the traditional journey from unself-consciousness to being conscious of one's life; in its simplicity, directness, and its archetype of inner discovery, we can relate to Gilgamesh.

            In the Epic of Gilgamesh we can see ourselves, but to do so we might delete cultural referents and concentrate on the man who is Gilgamesh, a man who is us. We are contemporary people, living at least four thousand years after Gilgamesh lived or was invented, whether he is an invention, a fictional being, or an historical character; we can relate to his journey for it is also our journey, not embellished by belief or gods or being saved by someone else, and in this Gilgamesh, portrayed in mankind's oldest text, is contemporary. He is relevant at both ends of linear time -- alpha and omega, beginning and ending, A to Z, the apparent beginning and the end of the age in which we live -- we can identify with someone from the beginning of time. Ironic, isn't it? But it speaks to the enduring authenticity of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

            There is also the story itself, and what a contemporary story it is as Gilgamesh searches for the meaning of life, the ultimate meaning, the meaning that explains the purpose of life, that explains the purpose of his life. The meaning of life is to understand life better, to be a conscious person, to make sense of life, perhaps to even find some peace in life. Gilgamesh is an archetype for the person who searches for meaning; that's how I read his adventure, his story, his journey. This is one of the ways in which people today can learn from this epic, it is thoroughly contemporary even with its inclusion of gods and experiences impossible for people today to relate to except as literature, myth, and dream content. But at an archetypal and psychological level Gilgamesh and his story open a level of understanding of existence that is valuable for a contemporary audience. 

            Gilgamesh predates Homer's Odyssey and Iliad which date from 1,000 B.C. There is an oral tradition that helped preserve Homer's work but this doesn't seem to apply to the Epic of Gilgamesh, it is a written text. This reminds me of Grimm's fairy tales, collected by the Grimm brothers in the early half of the 19th Century; but research maintains that the stories collected by the Grimm brothers originated as far back as 4,000 years B.C. and I have also read that they are as old as 20,000 years, predating even Gilgamesh. They are archetypal and ageless, beyond time itself, as are all myths that work on a psychological level: don't take them literally but as a way to understand the eternal enigma of human existence.

            Gilgamesh seems to have missed out on an oral tradition as is found in both Homer and the Grimm fairy tales, but we have a written text for Gilgamesh. We know of the Epic of Gilgamesh only because cuneiform tablets containing the text of this literary work were discovered in the mid-1800s and later translated into English, this was fortuitous because even today very few people can actually read these tablets or speak the ancient language in which they are written. It is also a synchronistic discovery, Gilgamesh was discovered just when his story needed to be discovered. But is it possible that the Epic of Gilgamesh is older than 2,000 BC?  

            Another point is that the biblical story of the flood, coming after Gilgamesh was written, is also found in the Gilgamesh epic; apparently, whoever wrote the Book of Genesis, in which the flood story is included, knew or had heard of the Gilgamesh version of the flood. The biblical version of the flood is more or less a direct copy of that which is found in Gilgamesh. Was the Gilgamesh version of this story transmitted orally to the authors of the Old Testament?

            I am old fashioned, I believe in a didactic aspect to what I read; I like to learn things from what I read, especially things appertaining and contributing to my understanding of life. Whether it is F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby or Melville's Moby Dick, or the Epic of Gilgamesh, I am always aware of content and narrative, symbol and archetype that help me better understand both my own life and the life of others. Never underestimate this transcendent aspect of reading.   

The garden, early May

It was Coronation Day, 6 May 2023, and the garden was coming to life. After a lot of rain and cold in April the sun was bright and the sky blue, birds had returned to the bird bath, hostas and ferns were growing fast. Trees were turning green, the lilac bush was ready to flower.

There isn't much to the garden this early in spring but it is coming back to life. After months of cold, short days, snow, and more or less being housebound, spring had returned to Montreal. I've already planted six new hostas (and I'll plant another six next week) and we now have a second bird bath. It looks like we'll have a nice garden this year!

The fence has enclosed the garden and I've begun planting a second row of hostas

That bench is sixty years old but still in good condition, I look forward 
to sitting outside on it and getting a different view of the garden

A new, second bird bath

More ferns than ever this year

Return to the hidden trail

First walk this spring on the hidden trail which is on a ridge above the train tracks from the Westminster Bridge to Meadowbrook Golf Course. Access to the trail is below the bridge on the north side.

And, of course, wonderful sounds: birds singing, a train passes (a Canadian sound we all know), water running down to the tracks, and always more birds. 

But I am not impressed with all of the stuff that has been dumped in the area beside the trail: old tires, BBQs, garden junk, people think the world is their personal garbage can. BTW, we don't say "trash" here in Canada, it's just plain old "garbage".

And now there are notices posted saying this area will become part of a larger nature trail through this area. I heard of this before, it seems to be a joint Hydro Quebec - City of Montreal project, to clear the way between different sections of electrical pylons and create new trails that are connected and cross this part of the city . . . they say it will be the country in the city. It's a good idea, I guess, but I don't like losing this trail as it is. However, everything changes -- the St. Pierre River is covered over, the trail will be changed, and so on --. And how long will it be before this happens? At the rate government moves it will be years. So, for once, not worrying. 

Spring visit to Mount Royal Cemetery

You can draw a thick black line across history: there is before Covid and after Covid; and "after Covid" is worse than Covid. I really doubt any political party can reverse our decline, or wants to reverse it; the choice is between which party will accelerate the decline and which party will slow the decline. Of course, some places were on the decline before Covid and their decline was made more obvious by Covid. 

So, draw your line in the sand, draw it on paper with a thick black Sharpie, and say farewell to the past. 

Photos taken at Mount Royal Cemetery or 08 May 2023.

Above: the Molson mausoleum 

"The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot

 

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty
That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early

The ship was the pride of the American side
Coming back from some mill in Wisconsin
As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most
With a crew and good captain well seasoned
Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
When they left fully loaded for Cleveland
And later that night when the ship's bell rang
Could it be the north wind they'd been feelin'?

The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound
And a wave broke over the railing
And every man knew, as the captain did too
T'was the witch of November come stealin'
The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait
When the gales of November came slashin'
When afternoon came it was freezin' rain
In the face of a hurricane west wind

When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck sayin'
"Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya"
At seven PM, a main hatchway caved in, he said
"Fellas, it's been good to know ya"
The captain wired in he had water comin' in
And the good ship and crew was in peril
And later that night when his lights went outta sight
Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Does any one know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay
If they'd put fifteen more miles behind her
They might have split up or they might have capsized
They may have broke deep and took water
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the rooms of her ice-water mansion
Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams
The islands and bays are for sportsmen
And farther below Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the gales of November remembered

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed
In the maritime sailors' cathedral
The church bell chimed 'til it rang twenty-nine times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee
Superior, they said, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early

Note: I think of the late Gordon Lightfoot as a poet, as a poet who was nation building, similar to Al Purdy. This is one of the great songs of Canada and is beautifully written. Gordon Lightfoot, born November 17, 1938, died May 1, 2023)

On liberty, from Barbara Amiel's Confessions

 

Confessions (1980, 1981) by Barbara Amiel

We Canadians take freedom for granted; unlike Americans we were never big on liberty and even less so today. I am not sure freedom was ever an issue in Canada, independence from the United Kingdom was greeted with a yawn; we have been complacent and lazy and assumed the government was benign. And now freedom and liberty have become verboten words, they associate anyone saying them with being a conservative and we all know the anti-conservative bias of the CBC. Conservatives are condemned out of hand by progressives and liberals. Conservatives are cancelled. 

Why did the parents of some of my former students come to Canada? Some were boat people from Viet Nam, some were from Cambodia, others were from Afghanistan and other places where freedom didn't exist. All of these people love freedom and came to Canada in order to be free, which means to have the opportunity to fulfill one's capacity, one's ambition, and one's intelligence; to speak freely, express one's religion freely, to buy and own property as one wishes. Most of these people have flourished in Canada which has given them a new life of opportunities in a new country. These people came to Canada for liberty and freedom but the times have changed; in Canada today, the desire is to restrict people's liberty and criticize anyone who speaks of freedom. Being safe is the priority of our federal government, and Justin Trudeau is quick to praise being safe; maybe he's right . . . but you don't build a great country by being safe.

Still worth reading over forty years after it was first published, here is what Barbara Amiel writes on liberty; from Barbara Amiel's Confessions (1980,1981), pages 118-119:

And why is liberty important? Liberty itself, of course, doesn't solve any of the problems of existence. It doesn't even address itself to their solution. All it does is to leave each person free to find an answer to a pressing human need, lack, or iniquity. It does not attempt to substitute a party's, a dictator's, a saint's, or a philosopher's view for the goodwill and ingenuity of millions of free individuals.

Does liberty have a price? It certainly does. When people are free to act well, they are also free to act badly. When they are free to hold humane and accurate views, they are also free to hold inhuman and stupid opinions. But the safety-net of classical liberalism rests on the not unreasonable belief that free people will act for the good with at least the same frequency as they act for the bad, while excesses of malice and greed can be held in check by ordinary criminal laws guarding citizens against injury, theft, fraud, libel, and the like.

Does liberty work better than the planned society? For millennia centralized kingdoms, empires, and religious states have planned diligently for prosperity which eluded them (or was theirs only temporarily as a result of bloody conquest) until the ideals of classic liberalism allowed a small part of the world in which they took hold -- North America and Western Europe, mainly -- to create undreamed-of riches. Of course, the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution played an immense part in this -- but were themselves largely produced by this freedom.

The wealth created by a relatively undirected, uncanonized, untheological, un-feudal, free-trading, supply-and-demand economy was, of course, not distributed equally among citizens, but who can deny that it was distributed more equally -- and more equitably -- than the wealth of any centrally regulated regulated system, monarchy, or dictatorship, before or since? And while justice in such free societies was far from perfect, who can deny that it was far more perfect than justice meted out in  a regulated state? 

Temporary Permanence

  

Labyrinth under leaves outside of Buddhist temple, Terrebonne Avenue;
this Buddhist temple used to be a part of Rosedale United Church

There is no real permanence to life, there is only change and impermanence. The opposite of change and impermanence isn't permanence, it is not a duality; we fool ourselves thinking things are dualities when they really have nothing to do with each other; is good the opposite of bad or are they totally different states of being? Writers have a claim on permanence, a temporary claim, and this lies in writing things down, this gives a kind of permanence to what we think or say. Of course, it is also a kind of folly, but who really cares? We prefer illusion over truth; all writing is illusion and impermanent and one day even Shakespeare's plays will disappear. Writing is folly if we think it will give us any permanence; life is not constituted to be permanent. So we vote for a temporary permanence, and we love irony.  

The Shovel

 

At 2217 Hampton Avenue, around 1953

Not long ago I wrote about my grandfather, who was a fireman, and about a steel fire department shovel of his that I was given after he died. The photo above was taken outside of my grandfather's Hampton Avenue home, I am on the left, my brother is on the right. Perhaps I was three years old and not necessarily the lovely child I thought I was; around this time I dropped lighted matches in my grandfather's mail box, just behind where I am standing on the front steps to his home. My grandfather was a fireman and what do I do? I set on fire the curtains just above his mail box. Meanwhile, upstairs from my grandfather's flat was the flat of my Uncle John and Auntie Muriel; one day we were visiting them and seeing a large and difficult jig saw puzzle that my aunt had just completed I wondered how strongly it was held together, pulling two sides of the puzzle, the jig saw puzzle fell apart; this is minor compared to the fire incident, but it didn't go over very well. No wonder the young are parents, only the young have patience needed to deal with children. 

"Nothing" by The Fugs

 

The Fugs first album, 1965

Monday, nothing
Tuesday, nothing
Wednesday and Thursday nothing
Friday, for a change
a little more nothing
Saturday once more nothing

Sunday nothing
Monday nothing
Tuesday and Wednesday nothing
Thursday, for a change
a little more nothing
Friday once more nothing

Montik gornisht,
Dinstik Gornisht
Midwoch an Donnerstik gornisht
Fritik, far a noveneh gornisht pikveleh
Shabas nach a mool gornisht

Lunes nada
Martes nada
Miercoles y Jueves nada
Viernes, por cambia
un poco mas nada
Sabado otra vez nada

January nothing
February nothing
March and April nothing
May and June
a lot more nothing
July nothing

'29 nothing
'32 nothing
'39, '45 nothing
1965 a whole lot of nothing
1966 nothing

reading nothing
writing nothing
even arithmetic nothing
geography, philosophy, history, nothing
social anthropology a lot of nothing

oh, Village Voice nothing
New Yorker nothing
Sing Out and Folkways nothing
Harry Smith and Allen Ginsberg
nothing, nothing, nothing

poetry nothing
music nothing
painting and dancing nothing
The world's great books
a great set of nothing
Audy and Foudy nothing

fucking nothing
sucking nothing
flesh and sex nothing
Church and Times Square
all a lot of nothing
nothing, nothing, nothing

Stevenson nothing
Humphrey nothing
Averell Harriman nothing
John Stuart Mill nil, nil
Franklin Delano nothing

Karl Marx nothing
Engels nothing
Bakunin and Kropotkin nothing
Leon Trotsky lots of nothing
Stalin less than nothing

nothing nothing nothing nothing
lots and lots of nothing
nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing
lots of it
nothing!
Not a God damn thing

"In The Fields" by Charlotte Mew

 

Lord when I look at lovely things which pass,

Under old trees the shadow of young leaves

Dancing to please the wind along the grass,

Or the gold stillness of the August sun on the August sheaves;

Can I believe there is a heavenlier world than this?

And if there is

Will the heart of any everlasting thing

Bring me these dreams that take my breath away?

They come at evening with the home-flying rooks and the scent

of hay.

Over the fields. They come in spring.

On impermanence

 

The thing is to accept (and even like) the very thing about life that upsets one the most because we are moving irreconcilably to death. And that is the impermanence of life. We can't freeze life to when we were most happy. We continue on and on and then we reflect on the past, on when we were happy but, perhaps, didn't know it. We weren't self-conscious in our happiness. It doesn't work that way; we think back, we're nostalgic creatures, and we fix on a time when we were most happy, or we think we were. We fight our emotions and ideas of self-reproachment, we beat them down! Why are we even having them? Because self-reproachment is an act of depression and we live with more or less mild depression all of the time. And we remember the past and wish we could live on an island of unself-consciousness and unreflected happiness. Is it a hallucination? Does it make any sense? We are sad, we grieve for what we had. We hate impermanence. And we are too old to suffer more impermanence, more change. What to do? What to do? 

                                                                                        16 April 2023

"Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud" by John Donne

 

At Mount Royal Cemetery, 2016

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

"The Cold Green Element" by Irving Layton

 

Irving Layton and Stephen Morrissey, 1997 

At the end of the garden walk

the wind and its satellite wait for me;

their meaning I will not know

                until I go there,

but the black-hatted undertaker

 

who, passing, saw my heart beating in the grass,

is also going there. Hi, I tell him,

a great squall in the Pacific blew a dead poet

                out of the water,

who now hangs from the city’s gates.

 

Crowds depart daily to see it, and return

with grimaces and incomprehension;

if its limbs twitched in the air

                they would sit at its feet

peeling their oranges.

 

And turning over I embrace like a lover

the trunk of a tree, one of those

for whom the lightning was too much

                and grew a brilliant

hunchback with a crown of leaves.

 

The ailments escaped from the labels

of medicine bottles are all fled to the wind;

I’ve seen myself lately in the eyes

                of old women,

spent streams mourning my manhood,

 

in whose old pupils the sun became

a bloodsmear on broad catalpa leaves

and hanging from ancient twigs,

                my murdered selves

sparked the air like the muted collisions

 

of fruit. A black dog howls down my blood,

a black dog with yellow eyes;

he too by someone’s inadvertence

                saw the bloodsmear

on the broad catalpa leaves.

 

But the furies clear a path for me to the worm

who sang for an hour in the throat of a robin,

and misled by the cries of young boys

                I am again

a breathless swimmer in that cold green element.